Glencore considers ditching UK stock market listing; air fares, food and private school fees push UK inflation to 3% – business live

Thomas Ryan, North America economist at Capital Economics, has looked at the US figures.

The decline in housing starts in January is not a major concern, as it comes after a surge in starts in December and appears partly driven by the unseasonably harsh weather. Encouragingly, permit issuance remained solid, reinforcing our view that starts will grind higher in the first half of the year, before Trump’s tariff and immigration policies take effect, eroding developers’ ability and willingness to build and causing starts to drop back.

The 9.8% month-on-month fall in seasonally adjusted housing starts in January only partially reversed the 16.1% m/m jump in December, taking them to 1.37m annualised, from 1.52m. That still leaves starts slightly above their average from last year and broadly in line with our year-end forecast.

The main driver was a 91,000 decline in single-family starts, with starts in the volatile multi-family segment down by 58,000. The polar vortex that hit the eastern half of the country appears to have contributed to the fall, as starts in those regions fell, while they edged up in the West which was unaffected. Likewise, permit issuance inched up showing that builders remain confident to start new projects.

US housing starts fall more than expected, permits rise

Britain’s biggest weapons manufacturer BAE Systems has reported record orders as the European defence industry gears up for increased spending sparked by the Ukraine war.

The company, a member of the FTSE 100 share index, said that it expected sales next year to top £30bn, as it reported annual profits before interest and tax of more than £3bn for the first time in 2024.

Weapons companies have benefited from a rush of spending in the three years since Russia invaded Ukraine, and they are gearing up for further increases as Europe and the UK, which is reviewing defence spending, scramble to adjust to Donald Trump’s signals that the US will withdraw much of its support.

The US was the key military backer of Ukraine’s resistance until Donald Trump’s return to the White House. However, Trump blamed Ukraine for the war on Tuesday, and his administration held talks this week with Russia that excluded Ukraine, the EU and the UK.

Charles Woodburn, the chief executive of BAE Systems, said the company was “waiting for some clarity” about the extent of European defence spending increases but “given what’s happening, it’s going to be higher than it is today”.

KFC, the fast food chain previously known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, has come in for some heat after announcing plans to move its corporate headquarters from the state after which it is named to Texas.

The chain’s parent company, Yum! Brands, told investors it would move about 100 employees from its office in Louisville, Kentucky, more than 800 miles south-west to the city of Plano in Texas, where the group’s Pizza Hut chain is headquartered.

The employees are expected to move in the next six months and will receive relocation support. An extra 90 remote workers will be expected to move to Texas or other Yum! Brands’ corporate offices during the coming 18 months.

The governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear, said in statement:

I am disappointed by this decision and believe the company’s founder would be, too.

This company’s name starts with Kentucky, and it has marketed our state’s heritage and culture in the sale of its product.

Here’s our analysis on the jump in UK inflation to 3% in January:

Andrew Bailey had warned there would be a bump in the road. But after inflation jumped by more than expected to 3% in January, the Bank of England governor could be in for a rockier ride than anticipated.

For the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, too, it will be a tough road to travel, having promised to achieve economic growth that can be “felt in people’s pockets” – amid the accusation Labour is leaving those pockets feeling lighter, not heavier.

A few years ago, Bailey and his peers in the US and the eurozone were burned by predicting the period of high inflation coming out of the Covid pandemic would be “transitory”, only to see living costs continue to accelerate amid a succession of economic shocks.

It is a debacle that could have worrying parallels this time around. While Threadneedle Street has warned that inflation could hit a fresh peak of 3.7% later this year, it reckoned this would prove temporary, as it kept the door open to further interest rate cuts.

Some City investors say this is wishful thinking. Despite all the warnings, including from the central bank, the economy grew in the final quarter of last year, while pay growth accelerated and unemployment remained low. Although growth remains sluggish, inflationary pressures are bubbling under the surface.

Given the Bank’s recent experience of calling things wrong, it would be an uncharacteristically bold move to cut borrowing costs while headline inflation is so far above its 2% target rate.

Also yesterday, Donald Trump stood firm against warnings that his threatened trade war risks derailing the US economy, claiming his administration could hit foreign cars with tariffs of around 25% within weeks.

Semiconductor chips and drugs are set to face higher duties, Trump told reporters at a news conference on Tuesday.

The White House has repeatedly raised the threat of tariffs since Trump returned to office last month, pledging to rebalance the global economic order in America’s favor.

A string of announced tariffs have yet to be introduced, however, as economists and business urge the Trump administration to reconsider.

Duties on imports from Canada and Mexico have been repeatedly delayed; modified levies on steel and aluminum, announced last week, will not be enforced until next month; and a wave of so-called “reciprocal” tariffs, also trailed last week, will not kick in before April.

Tariffs are taxes on foreign goods. They are paid by the importer of the product – in this case, companies and consumers based inside the US – rather than the exporter, elsewhere in the world.

Asked on Tuesday if he had decided the rate of a threatened tariff on cars from overseas, Trump said he would “probably” announce that on 2 April, “but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25%”.

Upon being asked the same question about threatened tariffs on semiconductors and pharmaceuticals, Trump replied: “It’ll be 25% and higher, and it’ll go very substantially higher over the course of a year.”

The ramp-up, he explained, was designed to lure manufacturers to the US. “When they come into the United States, and they have their plant or factory here, there is no tariff.”

China condemns Trump’s ‘tariff shocks’ at WTO; US hits back

HSBC is delaying key parts of its climate goals by 20 years, while watering down environmental targets in a new long-term bonus plan for its chief executive, Georges Elhedery, that could be worth up to 600% of his salary.

The London-headquartered lender said it had launched a formal review of its net zero emissions policies and targets – which are split between its own operations and those of the clients it finances – after realising its clients and suppliers had “seen more challenges” in cutting their carbon footprint than expected.

HSBC had planned to hit net zero targets for its own operations – arguably a much easier goal than cutting the emissions of its loan portfolio and client base – by 2030. However, those plans, which were set in 2020, are now being pushed out by two decades to 2050.

“Progress in reducing emissions in the … supply chain component is proving slower than we anticipated,” HSBC’s annual report said. “We currently expect a 40% emissions reduction across our operations, travel and supply chain by 2030 which would mean that we would need to rely heavily on carbon offsets to achieve net zero in our supply chain by 2030.

“As such, we have revisited our ambition, taking into account latest best practice on carbon offsets. We are now focused on achieving net zero in our operations, travel and supply chain by 2050.”

HSBC is also proposing to water down environmental targets in Elhedery’s new pay package, including a long-term incentive plan (LTI) worth up to £9m, or 600% of the his base salary. It is part of a wider pay proposal that will give Elhedery a chance to earn up to £15m a year, up 43% from his current potential pay of up to £10.5m.

The environmental portion of the LTI, a bonus that will cover performance from 2025-2027, has been reduced to 20% from 25%. HSBC said this would “ensure a greater proportion of the LTI is aligned to value creation while supporting our ESG (environmental, sustainability and governance) ambitions”.

Meanwhile, the LTI will only be linked to progress made in cutting the bank’s own emissions – including those that have been delayed – given that tracking progress of its client base was “difficult”.

The campaign group Generation Rent said the rest of the UK should follow the Scottish government’s example, which is proposing to introduce a cap on rents.

The group noted that a recent report by Zoopla found that rents for new lets are £270 per month higher than three years ago, adding £3,240 (27%) to the annual cost of renting since 2021.

Meanwhile, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s 2024 UK poverty report found more than a third of private renters were in poverty after housing costs.

Responding to the latest figures from the ONS, deputy chief executive of Generation Rent, Dan Wilson Craw, said:

Everyone needs a safe, secure and affordable home. But renters across the UK are facing soaring rents which are far outstripping our earnings.

When we are forced to spend too much of our income on rent, the effects ripple across the rest of our lives. It means children are going to school hungry, and older renters can’t afford to turn the heating on. High rents are trapping people in poverty.

It’s encouraging to see the Scottish Government proposing to introduce rent caps. We now need to see a similar approach across the rest of the UK to urgently slam the brakes on rising rents and give people the breathing space we need.

UK house prices rise by 4.6% in 2024, rents up by 8.7%

Glencore is the biggest loser on the FTSE 100 index this morning, with the shares down 6.5% at 330.55p, after it said lower commodity prices weighed on profits last year.

Underlying profits fell by 16% to $14.36bn in 2024, from $17.1 bn last year, in line with analysts’ forecasts. Glencore traded 3.7m barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil, oil products and gas products last year, compared with 3.3m bpd in 2023.

Last year marked the second consecutive year of lower profit for Glencore, following two record years with soaring metals’ prices.

Even so, the Swiss-based miner and commodity trader is returning $2.2bn to shareholders via share buybacks, to be completed before its half-year results on 6 August. This means shareholders will get 18 cents a share this year, compared with 13 cents last year. This should boost the share price going forward.

The shares lost 25% of their value in 2024, more than other diversified miners – BHP and Rio Tinto’s London-list shares lost 21% and 19% respectively, while Anglo American’s shares climbed by 20%.

Last year, the London Stock Exchange suffered its largest exodus since the 2009 financial crisis. According to its own data, 88 companies delisted or transferred their primary listing from London’s main market in 2024, and only 18 came onto the market.

They included Ashtead, the £27bn construction rental company which announced plans to shift its primary listing to New York in December.

Companies such as takeaway giant Just Eat, the Paddy Power owner, Flutter, and Europe’s biggest travel operator, Tui, also said they intended switch their primary listings away from London to rival hubs such as New York and Frankfurt.

Meanwhile, London has lost out on blockbuster IPOs including that of the UK chip designer Arm, which opted to list on Wall Street in August 2023. The buy now, pay later company Klarna has followed suit.

Glencore considers ditching UK stock market listing